How Many Conflicts Can the U.S. Sustain?

FARAH, Afghanistan (Jan. 9, 2013) Security force team members for Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Farah wait for a UH-60 Blackhawk medevac helicopter, assigned to Army National Guard C Company, 2-211th Aviation Regiment (Air Ambulance), to land before moving a simulated casualty during medical evacuation training on Forward Operating Base Farah. (USAID). (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Hospital Corpsman Josh Ives/Released)

Pat Buchanan, writing at The American Conservative, asks readers just how many conflicts can the United States sustain? With America heading into year 17 of the Afghanistan conflict, troops will soon be heading into war against the Taliban who weren’t even alive on September 11, 2001. Pat goes on to wonder about the many other conflicts America has committed itself to across the world. He writes (abridged):

Friday, deep into the 17th year of America’s longest war, Taliban forces overran Ghazni, a provincial capital that sits on the highway from Kabul to Kandahar.

In Yemen Monday, a funeral was held in the town square of Saada for 40 children massacred in an airstrike on a school bus by Saudis or the UAE, using U.S.-provided planes and bombs.

As for our relations with Turkey, they have never been worse.

President Erdogan regards our Kurd allies in Syria as collaborators of his own Kurdish-terrorist PKK.

Which raises a question: How many quarrels, conflicts and wars, and with how many adversaries, can even the mighty United States sustain?

In November, the most severe of U.S. sanctions will be imposed on Iran.

Last week, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Russia.

Last week also, a U.S. Poseidon reconnaissance plane, observing China’s construction of militarized islets in the South China Sea, was told to “leave immediately and keep out.”

China claims the sea as its national territory.

And North Korea’s Kim Jong Un apparently intends to hold onto his arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Are we prepared to see these confrontations through?

And if it comes to a fight, how many allies will we have in the battles and wars that follow?

Was this the foreign policy America voted for?